44 



into a mass resembling new cheese, in which state it gives forth 

 a very disgreeable odor. The fermented paste is made into cakes 

 and baked, and is then palatable and nutritious. This method of 

 preserving breadfruit is also followed by the Samoans, who call 

 the cakes 'masi,' a name now applied by them to ship biscuit and 

 crackers. In Rarotonga the fermented paste is called 'mat.'* 



Herman Melville gives a lively account in his romantic story of 



1 ypee : 



"The most simple manner (of cooking) consists in placing any 

 number of the freshly-plucked fruit, when in a particular state of 

 greenness, among the embers of a fire, in the same way that you 

 would roast a potato. After the lapse of ten or fifteen minutes, 

 the green rind embrowns and cracks, showing through the fissures 

 in its sides the milk-white interior. As soon as it cools the rind 

 drops off", and you then have the soft round pulp in its purest and 

 most delicious state. Thus eaten, it has a mild and pleasing 

 favor. 



"Sometimes after having been roasted in the fire, the natives 

 snatch it briskly from the embers, and permitting it to slip out of 

 the yielding rind into a vessel of cold water, stir up the mixture, 

 which they call 'bo-a-so.' I never could endure this compound, 



"There is one form, however, in which the fruit is occasionally 

 served, that renders it a dish fit for a king. As soon as it is taken 

 from the fire the exterior is removed, the core extracted, and the 

 remaining part is placed in a sort of shallow stone mortar, and 

 briskly worked with a pestle of the same substance. While one 

 person is performing this operation, another takes a ripe cocoanut, 

 and breaking it in half, which they also do very cleverly, proceeds 

 to grate the juicy meat into fine particles. . . . Having obtained 

 a quantity sufficient for his purpose, he places it in a bag made of 

 the net-like fibrous substance attached to all cocoanut trees, and 

 compressing it over the bread-fruit, which being now sufficiently 

 pounded, is put into a wooden bowl — extracts a thick creamy 

 milk. The delicious liquid soon bubbles around the fruit, and 



*\V. E. Safford, Useful Plants of Guam, Contr. U. S. Nat Herb., 9: 189. 1905. 

 See also Seeman, Flora Vitiensis. 



